Resurrections and Resonances- the stories of the Nun’s Book

During my time at the Pitt Rivers I had the opportunity to work with a range of amazing objects from across the collection. My day might range from accessioning Palaeolithic stone tools, to photographing Ecuadorian terracotta votives, to trying to piece together letter fragments from the 19^th century found in an ancient Peruvian pot. However, of all these objects and their associated histories, one that struck me the most came in an unlikely form- a 17^th century manual on loop braiding, the so-called ‘Nun’s Book’ (2008.67.1). What had begun as a routine exercise in cross-referencing the database, unfolded into a compelling tale of the resurrection of a lost art form and its associated lives. These lives subsequently challenge our preconceptions of historical intimacy and relationships, while also offering an interesting test case in how we might locate ordinary ‘queer’ lives in history. Ultimately, the book attests to the unexpected power and insight that seemingly mundane objects can hold, a tenet that holds true of the museum’s collection as a whole.

Detail of braid included in 'Nun's book'
Below: Page from Nun's book 2008.67.1

Loop braiding or fingerloop braiding is the name given to a number of techniques where loops of thread, attached to a central point, are hooked around fingers and interlaced in different ways to create braids. This technique was common in Europe through the Medieval and the beginning of the Early Modern period, but the craft appears to have fallen into obscurity from the 17^th century onwards. Historical examples of such braids are rare due to the degrading of the textiles through the centuries but a number of manuscripts survive with ‘patterns’ for such braids. The Nun’s Book is one such pattern-book, notable for having surviving examples of braids (figs. 1 & 2) but the book becomes truly unique when you consider the type of braids it contains, letter-braids. These are braids with letters and messages woven into them of which very few examples remain. The technique of creating such braids was all but lost until the pioneering research and analysis of Naomi Speiser and Joy Boutrup. While the Nun’s Book is a pattern book the instructions contained within are incredibly opaque to a modern reader, a series of baffling tables seemingly impenetrable even by experts. However, through in depth analysis of the surviving braids and experimentation, the technique has been cracked, resurrected after more than 200 years and along with it an intriguing glimpse into their original creators and the braids’ potential purposes.

In Appendix I of Speiser & Boutrup (2009) is a list, straightforwardly titled ‘Texts for Letter Braids’, suggestions found within The Nun’s Book and other manuscripts of messages people could weave into their braids. What I found within this list was strange, surprising, and touching. The majority of the texts were deeply affectionate messages directed towards the wearer-

Deare friend I’le do my best Indeaver- To knit your affection unto me forever

No greater portion would I crave- Then whilst I live your Love to have

Take it and wear and think withal- My Love is great though gift be small

Though far a parte- Yet neare in hearte 

Moreover, we find similar messages suggested in other letter braid manuscripts suggesting that this is not simply a peculiarity of The Nun’s Book but an intended characteristic in the creation of these braids-

My Love in this: Presented is[iv]

These suggest the braids were intended as gifts between close friends or lovers, a memento while the other was absent. A touching piece of history, but the story becomes more intriguing when we realise these were most likely primarily exchanged between women, an interpretation Speiser suggests in her work which is also apparent in some of the suggested messages-

Heare May you see in Letters few- The Love of her that honoreth you

Another aspect worth noting is the emphasis some place on concealment of affection, a notion that the two cannot freely express themselves-

I love you well but dare not show it- Doe you the like but let me know it

The Love I owe I cannot showe

The question then becomes- what was the nature of these relationships? Can we see these as expressing romantic love between two women? Or do these instead show different standards of expressing affection than modern normative conceptions? Are they both? While the lives of the women who created and exchanged these braids are lost and we cannot speak in certainties these grant us a tantalising glimpse into expressions of intimacy between ordinary women of the 17^th century. Even without these certainties, it certainly serves as a potential challenge to our preconceptions of this historical period, while also providing us examples of how and where we might locate ‘queer’ lives in history.

Alex Grindley
Collections Intern

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Interning with the Pitt Rivers Collections Department

Last summer I spent five weeks interning with the Pitt Rivers Museum’s (PRM) Collections department, this was an invaluable experience for me as a student looking to pursue a career in the museum sector. The internship taught me a lot; both in practical skills and about working in museums in general. I am very grateful for the opportunity, and for the Santander award funding I received through the Oxford University Internship Programme.

For the duration of my internship I was shadowing Faye Belsey and Nicholas Crowe in their day-to-day work. They, the whole Collections team, and everyone working at the Pitt Rivers were incredibly welcoming, friendly, and always eager to answer any questions that I had. I got to engage with so many different tasks, ranging from photographing La Madeline stone tools, to collecting objects from museums cases, to researching objects. Here I will just summarise a few tasks I undertook.

Over the course of my internship I assisted with two research visits, one from a curator of the Sarawak Museum, and one from a Maori art collective. These were very interesting experiences as they allowed me to engage hands on with material and learn more about the objects from people who really understood the context of the objects. Assisting with the Maori research visit was definitely a highlight of my time at the PRM. The objects the artists were exploring were mostly cloaks, but there were also woven bags, a piece of bark cloth, a Huia bird skin, and a tuatara knife. These artists explored the collection with excitement and passion, able to analyse every woven stitch to uncover how the object was made. Before beginning their research, a statement was made and their hands were washed, with some of the artists being moved to tears. This was incredible to see as it really contextualised the objects as belonging to a present cultural group, not some past peoples, as is so often expected of early collected ethnographic material. 

For the Sarawak research visit the objects were: two tobacco boxes, two shirts, four jackets, one hat. Of particular interest to the researcher was the hat (sera’ong). The this type of bamboo hat offers a protective power to a woman and child when worn. It offers protection from the sun, and from snakes and head hunters in the area outside the longhouse. The researcher had come across the hat on the PRM Online Database and thought there was a possibility it may have once been in the collections of the Sarawak Museum. It was a very exciting moment when, through handling the object, the Sarawak Museum Accession Number was uncovered, confirming the researcher’s theory.

Hat and inside of hat, 1923.86.102 . ©  Pitt Rivers Museum

Kesang Ball, London 2018. © Nyema Droma and Pitt Rivers Museum

At a later date, I helped with the transcribing of subtitles for the video of interviews shot by Nyema Droma during her photoshoots. It was particularly interesting to see how different people held conflicting opinions on the basis of identity, such as how much of it is symbolised by local dress. For example, Tsewang Gonpostated,“I think Tibetans should wear traditional costume more often as wearing a Tibetan outfit shows your Tibetan identity.” Whereas Tsering Yata believes, “My Tibetan identity is not about what I am wearing.” 

During my internship, the largest piece of independent research I undertook was the documentation of the John Driver acquisition. This was a collection of eighteen items donated to the museum after the passing of linguist John Driver. The objects were a selection of items from Driver’s time in Tibet, and were all textile based. I greatly enjoyed handling the textiles and trying to uncover their function and relation to other objects. One piece that was particularly exciting to analyse was the mask (2018.220.1) 

Mask, 2018.220.1 © Pitt Rivers Museum

Through searching online I discovered that this particular style of mask is a soft-shaped mask, of the hard quality type. It was made using paperboard as a roughcast and then cloth and animal skin are stuck on, with holes cut out for the eyes and mouth. This type of mask is seen primarily in folk operas, dancing performances, singing, and story-telling. They are basic and unsophisticated, displaying a strong influence of Tibetan folk art and the characteristics of the primitive art of masks. After researching the objects, I updated their information on the database, sewed on their labels and photographed them. It was incredibly rewarding being able to work with a group of objects from start to finish as I got to see first-hand the amount of work that goes into acquisitioning an object.

Both these research activities involved getting to grips with the Objects PRM Database. This was initially a difficult piece of software for me to navigate, but with time I got the hang of things and could confidently update information and search for objects. Near the end of my internship I attended a meeting centred on understanding how the database is used across the museum, and the functions that must be obtained when the software is updated. This was really interesting as I was able to learn how the database was used across the different departments; from collections, to conservation, and education.

One very exciting job I was lucky enough to assist with was the hanging of the Performing Tibetan Identities exhibition, photographed by Nyema Droma. It was fantastic to see the amount of work different departments do to both plan for and install an exhibition, and wonderful to see that a year of work had culminated in such a great result. The end result was stunning and conceptually interesting, with the installation boldly filling the empty space above the cabinets in the Great Court, producing the aesthetic of contemporary western art whilst echoing the form of strings of traditional Tibetan prayer flags.

This focus on the importance of traditional dress in identity making was particularly interesting to me having worked with the Tibetan textiles from the John Driver acquisition. Some of the pieces I researched were exquisitely made, and it would have been interesting to have discussed with their makers how they felt the pieces were reflective of Tibetan identity in the same way Nyema has asked contemporary Tibetans.

Another key task I performed during my internship was working at the off-site store. The OPS project has meant that all the material stored at the off-site store needed to be audited and packed to be moved. I arrived in the last few weeks of this project and assisted with the packaging of spears and identifying objects that had been found unnumbered.

The spears I was packing were mostly Australian or Asian, but there were also spears from all across the world. The variety was extraordinary, ranging from a sharpened stick to those that were ornately decorated, such as spears from Nagaland, North East India. Great caution had to be taken while packing so as not to damage the object, but also to avoid causing injury to myself or others around me. The approach was to consider all objects likely to be poisoned, which I had discussed with the Conservation department beforehand, and I was made aware of the safety precautions that ought to be taken.

The found unnumbered objects (FUs) are objects that had been found in the packing of the collections without an accession number on them. I worked with Joanna Cole to try and match these objects to database entries, and where it was not possible we endeavoured to describe the object and its possible use in as much detail as possible.

This experience has definitely affirmed my desire to work in the museum sector. Being able to engage with the different tasks of research visits, independent database work, exhibition planning, and collections management/organisation has definitely encouraged me to pursue work in a Collections team specifically. I have had an amazing experience interning at the Pitt Rivers, and am incredibly grateful to Nico and Faye for all their help, and I would certainly recommend the internship to others.

Catherine O’Brien

Gold-weights as cryptography: the memetics of Asante proverbs

Proverbs are an integral part of Asante Twi (the dialect of Akan native to the Asante people. Each proverb represents a moral tenant, and many reference a pantheon of characters from local folklore. In effect, proverbs are a kind of shorthand through which such abstract concepts such as mortality, sorcery, gender, experience, and duty can be invoked in just a few words.

Passed down over uncountable generations, many proverbs are so esoteric that they are unintelligible to those unfamiliar with the folklore they reference. As Sir Hugh Clifford writes in his preface to R. S. Rattray’s translation of Asante Proverbs: the Primitive Ethics of a Savage People, 

‘Many of the aphorisms will be found to be somewhat cryptic, and it is rather daunting to find the curt dictum that“When a fool is told a proverb, the meaning of it has to be explained to him.” If this which is apparently axiomatic to the Tshi-speaking native of West Africa—be applied to the student of Mr. Rattray's book, few of us, it is to be feared, will escape conviction of folly.’ (Rattray, 1918)

In an era when ‘the Primitive Ethics of a Savage People’was considered an appropriate subtitle for this scholarly volume, wholesale condemnation of Asante morality based on the above discrepancy seems inevitable. Yet—to his credit, given the colonial zeitgeist in which he was writing—Clifford cautions the reader that the purpose of anthropology is to understand different cultures’ perspectives, not to pass value judgements on them:

‘Both [theories of wisdom], I think, should whet our curiosity, and neither should excite our derision. Our task is to endeavour to understand the workings of the minds by which these sayings have been evolved and of the minds which have adopted them as expressions of the collective experience of a people [emphasis added]’ (Rattray, 1918).

Here, Clifford recognises that Asante proverbs comprise not a mere library of witticisms, but they are also manifestations of wisdom accrued over generations, and which continue to evolve to suit the present and future needs of their people. The fluidity of proverbs makes it especially difficult for outsiders unfamiliar with the society’s current events to understand their meanings. This effect is most starkly apparent in the number of proverbs that concern strangers, one of which directly references the inability (or possibly, unwillingness) of Europeans to understand Asante culture: 

Ohoho ani akese-akese, nanso enhu man mu asem, na nea ode kurow aniwa ukete-ukete na oho mu asem [diacritical marks omitted].

A stranger may have big big eyes, but he does not see into what is going on among the people he is among, whereas the town's man, with little little eyes, he knows all the town's affairs (Rattray, 1918).

Just as proverbs permeate the Asante oral tradition, so too does proverbial imagery feature prominently in their material culture. Whilst interning in Object Collections sections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, I had the opportunity and resources to learn about the museum’s collection of Asante artefacts, some of which are on display in the Lower Gallery. The PRM houses dozens of Asante gold-weights, many of which were carefully created to artistically represent the wisdom of the ancestral proverbs and folklore so central to Asante culture. Upon reading about the history of these gold-weights, the cultural significance of the imagery depicted through them became abundantly clear.

Intricately detailed and carefully curated, these hollow brass figures were cast by pouring molten metal into fired clay moulds. Once cooled, the figures were used as counterweights when measuring gold dust as payment in commercial transactions. Much like the weights used by miners in the California Gold Rush, the Asante weights were precision tools, and they were carefully calibrated to function in Ghana’s then entirely gold-based economy. 

The process of moulding, casting, calibrating, and perfecting the finished product was so complex that only skilled metalworkers could produce the weights; thus, they were considered precious and powerful commodities. Like other African blacksmithing traditions, Asante metalworking was a mysterious and potentially dangerous process akin to sorcery. Blacksmiths were respected and feared, forges were located outside the village grounds, and many rituals and taboos had to be observed to appease the spirits during smelting. The Asante people’s choice to use such a mysterious and powerful material for the quotidian task of measuring indicates that—despite their utilitarianism—the weights were not considered mere tools, but important expressions of Asante culture and heritage. 

The power inherent in the metal that comprises the weights is augmented by the forms that they take. The weights generally fall into one of two categories: geometric and figural. Geometric weights can take the shape of pyramids, cubes, spheres, discs, and any number of polygons, and they are often decorated with ornamental, Islamic-style motifs. Figural weights, in contrast, represent objects, animals, and people significant in Asante culture, especially those featuring in the multitude of Asante proverbs. It is these figural weights which we shall primarily examine as examples of folkloric encryption.

As Asante children mature, they learn the meanings of more and more proverbs from their elders, eventually becoming fully culturally-literate by the time they themselves are elders. An outsider, however, would have no way of learning the meanings of proverbs except by being taught, which requires first gaining the people’s trust. Thereby, Asante morality is both self-perpetuating (it is passed down through generations) and self-preserving (it cannot be learned except by those fully intrenched in Asante society, and thus cannot be easily altered by external intervention). Both of these features are important mechanisms in ensuring that the people’s wisdom is suitably protected, a useful asset in information security.

As well as protecting the integrity of the proverbs themselves, the inheritance of Asante wisdom also strengthens the structure of Asante society macroscopically. Firstly, the act of passing down folkloric knowledge from one generation to the next fortifies the Asante tradition of ancestor worship: the proverbs grant the ancestors immortality through memory. Moreover, the system through which elders bequeath wisdom to their juniors ensures that the most experienced—and thus most qualified—members of society have the most control over its affairs, a system which (theoretically) ensures greater political and economic stability. 

Gold-weights such as those in the PRM’s collection not only ensure fairness in commercial transactions (as is their intended purpose), but lend physical form to otherwise abstract facets of morality. Their materiality is at once mystical and terrestrial, encrypted and apparent. They are tactile, multisensory reminders that ethics are as real and necessary parts of the world as any physical object. They are cultural codes, decipherable only by those who understand their cultural context and who appreciate their power.

Though it is doubtful that Asante proverbs would have been intentionally devised as mechanisms for transmitting secrets securely, further research is required to determine to what extent this phenomenon was intentionally exploited in a wider context, if indeed it was at all. I do not attempt to attribute authorial intent where there is none, but rather to suggest the possibility that cryptography today can reach beyond the scope of its modern applications in cybersecurity. 

Though the information transmitted by exchange of these proverbs cannot be extracted in plaintext—as in conventional examples of cryptography—their meaning transcends the boundaries of language, encapsulating the visceral, emotional, uniquely human experience collected over innumerable generations of wisdom. That, I suggest, is the message encrypted not only in Asante culture, but in the wider spirit of human creativity as well. 

Miranda Loughry

PRM intern summer 2018

Stones and Skirts: Interning at the Pitt Rivers Museum

I remember the first time I went to a museum in primary school, on a fieldtrip. I had been interested in history even then, and seeing history manifest itself in material objects, all in one place, blew my little mind. As I grew older, my interest in history and the cultures and peoples of the past continued to develop, and ultimately, after gaining a Bachelor’s in Anthropology and Sociology, I decided to pursue a Master’s in Archaeology at Oxford University. It was stressful and very difficult at times, but whenever I needed a break to rekindle my love for my studies, I would go and roam around the various museums of Oxford, and the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM) quickly became one of my favourites, as it combined my love of both anthropology and archaeological material culture. When I heard that the PRM was offering a summer internship, I knew that I had to apply.

Interior view of the Pitt Rivers Museum © Pitt Rivers Museum

I applied to the paid five-week internship at the Pitt Rivers, funded by the Santander Award, through the Oxford University Internship Programme (OUIP), which allows students of the University of Oxford to apply to a large variety of internships both in the UK and abroad. I, along with another intern who is to begin after I finish, were selected for the Collections Internship at the Pitt Rivers. I was both excited and intimidated, and the feeling has not diminished even after the 5 weeks that I have spent here.

I performed a wide variety of tasks at the PRM, as the internship was meant to give me an idea of the various types of jobs and roles which are available in museum work; from shadowing Faye Belsey and Nicholas Crowe (my two supervisors) as they went about their various daily tasks (working on displays, meeting researchers, moving objects from various stores to the museum, etc.), learning how to catalogue objects into the museum’s database and doing research for future exhibitions, to spending afternoons with various museum staff to learn about their projects and going with them to collect new acquisitions, this internship gave me a taster of the various types of jobs that are available in the museum sector. 

In my first few weeks, I spent a lot of time shadowing different people, and looking at the projects which they were working on. I spent an afternoon looking at the journals and writings of Makereti Papakura, a Maori noblewoman, guide and ethnographer; she was the first Maori ethnographer, and one of the first to focus on women in the Maori culture. Her writings gave me a fascinating insight into both her life, and the culture and traditions of a people I knew very little about. I spent another afternoon looking through photographs donated by a British photographer of his travels, primarily through Asia and Africa, places which look significantly different than they did 70 years ago, with the pictures serving as archives of rapidly changing landscapes. 

One day a week, I helped the team at the Museum store; a large amount of the Pitt Rivers collection is stored there and is in the process of being catalogued, packed and relocated. Most of my days there I spent packing objects (mostly spears and amulets), in awe of the creative and vastly different designs human beings employ for the same objects. 

I also spent a large amount of time cataloguing and recording stone tools from Rohri, Pakistan. Some of the tools had not been previously recorded, and the experience of learning how the cataloguing system worked, how to record information about the stone tools and going through accession books trying to match the tools to their correct accession numbers, was extremely informative. Furthermore, the stone tools came from an area about 70 miles from Mohenjo-Daro, one of the largest settlements of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization, and an area of the world which holds a special place in my heart, as I am from Pakistan, and my research interests lie there as well. To be able to handle, record and engage with these tools in such a manner, and to be able to learn more about lithic analysis while doing so (something which I knew very little about), remains one of the highlights of my internship.

Original catalogues with drawings of stone tools © Pitt Rivers Museum

Alongside cataloguing the stone tools, one of the most interesting tasks which I performed was looking up information on two Iraqw skirts which the museum is to put on display soon. The skirts are examples of some of the most elaborately decorated textiles in East Africa, and were made by girls during the Marmo initiation ritual, where girls were taken away by elder women and secluded for up to a year. During this time, the girls were fed foods which were rich in fat and resulted in obesity, the area around their mouths was blackened with charcoal, animal oil was applied to their skin to make them shine, their bodies were scented with perfume obtained from a tree, they were taught folk songs and word games as well as sexual manners and were allowed to embroider their leather capes with beads of their own designs, making them into the skirts to be displayed. The girls would also be circumcised during this time. The ritual was thought to purify the girls, so that when they emerged from their seclusion, wearing their skirts and being highly adorned, they were thought to be reborn with a new innocence and dignity. Even though the ritual was banned in 1930, it is speculated that it was still carried out in secret. The skirts were absolutely stunning, and looking up information about them, and as a result, information about the Iraqw people and the marmo ritual, gave me insight into a part of the world and a people which I knew very little about. 

Iraqw skirts 1940.7.0114 and 2017.139.1© Pitt Rivers Museum

Aside from gaining valuable work experience and being able to look at various objects through the lens of a (albeit temporary) museum employee rather than just a visitor, one of the best things about my internship was also the people whom I worked with. Both Faye and Nicholas were incredibly kind, friendly, involved, and genuinely interested in what I wanted my internship experience to be like, and then tailoring it to my needs and interests. Everybody else in the museum was also genuinely passionate about their work, and were always more than happy to talk to me about it. 

I believe that this internship has not only given me a fantastic job experience, but has also rekindled my passion for working in the museum industry, and for all of these things, I am grateful. 

Hadiqa Khan 

Textiles from the Arab World: A dress from Palestine

I am working on the Esmée Fairbairn-funded Multaka-Oxford project. As the Collections Officer, part of my role is cataloguing a recent offer of textiles collected from across the Middle-East and North Africa, which the museum is in the process of acquiring. Costume and textile collections are some of my favourite to work with, particularly because how we dress can say so much about us. As such, costume and textile objects will be a great jumping off point for discussions with our volunteers and participants.

Lately I’ve been working on textiles that were collected from Palestine, like this beautifully embroidered dress:

This traditional dress (thōb) is probably from either Ramallah or Bethlehem and likely made around the 1920s-30s. It is made from hand woven natural linen and decorated with distinctive red silk embroidery. The silk would likely have been imported from Syria. The dress shows many of the features of traditional Palestinian costume, including the rich colour of the threads and the square chest panel (Qabbah) with embroidered motifs.  

The embroidery on the dress is mainly in cross-stitch and couching, and features beautiful geometric, floral and foliate patterns. Such motifs and how they are laid out is significant in traditional Palestinian embroidery, saying a great deal about who made it and where it was from. Creating embroidered dress was (and is) traditionally an art carried out by Palestinian women, passed down through families, and the particular patterns are deeply tired to identity. Specific motifs may speak to family, age, social status or location - even down to a particular village!

     
     
                                                                                       This dress features motifs such as ‘feathers’:

‘Moon of Bethlehem’ (or possibly ‘Moon of Ramallah’):

          

The weave of the linen on this dress is quite open, which makes it easier to produce counted thread embroidery, such as cross-stitch.

I love being able to see the smaller details, such as the reverse of the embroidery and the clearly hand-finished hems. As someone who sews, knits and embroiders in my spare time, the care, skill and patience involved in producing a dress like this is inspiring. There is so much to look at and think about!

Abigael Flack

Collections Officer

Exploring the Economic Botany Collection at Kew Botanic Gardens

The newly refurbished and opened Temperate House at Kew

On Friday 11th May I was invited to attend a workshop on ‘Economic Botany in the UK’ at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. With large thanks to Kew’s first Director, Sir William Jackson Hooker Kew Gardens holds a substantial collection of material classed as ‘economic botany’ a term which is unfamiliar to most. Economic botany is the study of useful plants. Such collections combine raw specimens with cultural artefacts which the raw material has been crafted into, combining natural history specimens with cultural ‘ethnographic’ objects, often referred to as ‘biocultural’ collections. 

Kew's economic botany collection as displayed to the public as a Museum in 1847. The Museum closed in the 1950s.

At the height of Empire such collections were amassed and displayed in dedicated museums and galleries during the Victoria era to demonstrate the successes of Imperial expansion, global trade and exploration (which can be translated as exploitation of natural resources in the colonies by the British Empire and underpinned negative legacies of Empire such as colonisation and slavery). 

As part of a three-year AHRC funded project ‘The Mobile Museum’ will examine the circulation of objects into and out of Kew Museum between 1847 and 1987. The Museum of Economic Botany at Kew was originally established by Hooker in 1847 to house ‘all kinds of useful and curious Vegetable products’ However, in the 1980’s the Museum buildings closed, the displays were disbanded and the Economic Botany collection moved to a purpose-built research store. Today, the collection, numbering some 100,000 items is a key resource. Throughout its history the entry and exit books provide clear evidence of the Museum as an important centre of knowledge exchange between other institutions, with a large number of exchanges and transfers from Kew to Museums in the UK and overseas, of which the Pitt Rivers Museum was one recipient. 

Warrington Museum

The workshop visited the project at its half way stage whereby lots of data about the collection has been gathered and the team are now looking more at data analysis, interpretation and education. We heard of a concurrent project looking at one of Kew’s eminent donor’s, Richard Spruce, an English botanist who spent many years collecting specimens from the Amazon rainforest. The theme of duplicates ran through the day with Spruce amassing a great number of specimens with the endless distribution of duplicates to Museum collections back in the UK evident in collection histories. Presentations from Manchester Museum, Warrington Museum, and Glasgow Museums followed, all institutions having significant botany collections and having benefited from the various redistributing of economic botany objects from Kew, which have largely been split between botany and ethnographic collections for curation and display today. 

I was struck by the similarities of Warrington Museum with the Pitt Rivers Museum with its galleried layout and wall cases. The botany gallery at Warrington displays material by use and purpose such as ‘the plant as dye’. For a long time, the botany gallery served as a vocational gallery for the local population highlighting that many local industries such tanning, weaving and chemical manufacture depends on plants. We heard how at Glasgow, of the thousands of specimens  that were transferred from Kew, only a handful are known to survive today and no raw materials, only the end products of economic botany. Collections care, conservation, limitations of record keeping and changes in classification could explain the unaccounted-for material. However, of the material accounted for the most cohesive outcome of the economic botany collections to have come from Kew are the bark cloth including important samples of Hawaiian and Tahitian bark cloth from the voyage of HMS Blonde accompanied by naturalist Andrew Bloxam in 1824 and HMS Galatea in 1867-1869 commanded by Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Victoria’s second son. 

Wardian case in the collections at Kew

A tasty lunch the Orangery at Kew, a building which once exhibited the wood samples of the economic botany collections was followed by a fascinating tour of the economic botany collection as it is stored today led by Mark Nesbitt and Caroline Cornish. At the stores we were able to view the entry and exit books kept by Kew, the exit book being of particular interest as the project is focusing on dispersal as much as acquisition, unusual in collections research where it is more common to give greater weight to how, when and why the object was acquired rather than its afterlife should it leave the Museum, which we are learning from this project can be just as colourful and interesting. Also brought to our attention at the store was a ‘Wardian case’ invented by Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward. The Wardian case proved an ideal way to transport plant specimens from the colonies aboard ship as the wooden framed glass case provided the most suitable micro climate for plants to survive in. 

Walking sticks manufactured by Henry Howell & Co. 

We were also walked down aisles of wood specimens including a sample of Acacia dealbata which formed part of the Tasmanian Timber Trophy, a defining feature of the 1862 London International Exhibition. I found most interesting a collection of walking sticks acquired from manufacturer Henry Howell & Co. The relationship between Howell & Co and Kew proved mutually beneficial as Howell donated hundreds of walking sticks, both the final product and the ‘blank’ for each wood. Kew were able to advise on the durability and suitability of the particular wood specimen for purpose. Of course there were items which one would expect to find in an economic botany/ethnographic collection today such as temple models carved from pith and samples of lace bark which one curator observed had been catalogued as ‘dusters’ in her collection due to the natural shape. We were also shown an incredible bark cloth poncho called a tiputa from Tahiti which had been carefully conserved by conservator Misa Tamura during the project ‘Situating Pacific barkcloth in time and place’ We have similar tiputa in the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum.  

Tiputa from Tahiti in the Kew collection

The final presentation of the day came from Caroline Cornish and Iban textile expert Traude Gavin. Traude visited the Pitt Rivers in 2017 to investigate further the complex history of a very old Iban cloth in the collections. Traude and Caroline’s talk looked more at the provenance of the cloth and how it came to be at the Pitt Rivers, another example of the complex exchange networks taking place in 19th-century collecting of botanical, natural history and ethnographic specimens and artefacts. 

The cloth has a complex history. It found its way to the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1886 having been transferred from the Ashmolean Museum. However, it would appear that the textile was originally one of thirteen cloths considered of duplicate value to have been sent from Sarawak by Sir James Brooke, the first Rajah of Sarawak. Brooke sent the cloths to his friend, scientist and botanist William Hooker, first director of Kew Gardens. The cloth was sent by Brooke with commercial enterprise in mind, Brooke was interested in opportunities for economic development in Sarawak and the cloth demonstrated that it was possible that natural cotton used in textile manufacture could be grown in a region of Borneo effectively under British rule and ripe for exploitation. Hooker decided to keep one of the thirteen cloths for Kew and sent a number of them to his friend at the British Museum Augustus Wollaston Franks. Franks, in turn was trustee of the Christy collection along with Hooker’s son and predecessor Joseph Hooker. The Henry Christy collection formed the basis of the ethnographic collection of the British Museum. In 1869 the textile destined for the PRM was included as part of an exchange with the Ashmolean Museum which in turn was sent in 1886 to the Pitt Rivers Museum just as the Museum opened to the public. Since then the cloth has been studied by researchers and information about the cloth has been accumulated and added to the Museum database. 

Iban textile at the Pitt Rivers Museum; 1886.1.259

This particular case study acts to illustrate the concept of the ‘duplicate’ and the network of exchange between institutions driven by individuals in place during the 19th century. The project team hope to discover more about the dispersed collections from Kew including the items that eventually came to the Pitt Rivers Museum so do follow the projects progress via the Mobile Museum website. 


Faye Belsey
Deputy Head of Collections